


steady now, steady then

by Hueyhuey



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Blind Character, Canon Disabled Character, Canon-Typical Violence, Catholic Guilt, Heavy Angst, Human Disaster Matt Murdock, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Major Character Injury, Mutual Pining, Season 1 episode 10, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-15
Updated: 2019-12-15
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:00:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21799504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hueyhuey/pseuds/Hueyhuey
Summary: Matt existed in the spaces between reality and oblivion. He acted for no discernable purpose. He wandered the earth searching for fights to appease his devil and more often than not ran out of room for much else.Enter Foggy.(Foggy and Matt's interactions through the years leading up to and including Season 1 Episode 10.)
Relationships: Matt Murdock/Franklin "Foggy" Nelson
Comments: 6
Kudos: 53





	steady now, steady then

**Author's Note:**

> I'm stalling out on tying off between two lungs, so here's this. It's a lot. It's reflective of a lot of personal angst. There are multiple references to suicide attempts. There is tons of alcohol abuse, implied depression, super-duper unhealthy coping mechanisms. Please please please do what you must to be safe.

Matt existed in the spaces between reality and oblivion. He acted for no discernable purpose. He wandered the earth searching for fights to appease his devil and more often than not ran out of room for much else. 

Enter Foggy. 

Foggy, who found him after the blood from his childhood had gone tacky and the wounds had scabbed over. After his eyes had become acquainted with the chemicals from that truck. After his father’s brains met the ground of that alley. After Stick’s staff had greeted his midriff again and again and again. After his devil had been wrung out by God and after he’d asked for forgiveness from Him in the shape of a noose. 

Foggy took Punjabi to chase a girl. That first night, his hair smelled unwashed and his clothes were wrinkled from the exertion of moving in. When Matt fell asleep and was overwhelmed by the sensations of a new space, he cried out in his sleep. Foggy said nothing. 

Electra came and went and took his soul but left his devil to fill the space. Foggy looked on as Matt dove deeper into sin, laughed with him after every rebound fell through. Always offered a pat on the back and some tissues and would Matt appreciate it if he narrated some new television show?

Matt prayed and begged and screamed for forgiveness from God, but no amount of confessions or Masses attended could purify the devil writhing inside of him. He prostrated himself, bent over backward and broke his spine in an effort to reach some greater meaning and when he straightened himself out there was nothing ahead and little else behind. 

Matt tried again with the noose but added alcohol this time to numb the pain because he was a coward. God refused his offer and he returned to the land of the living on the floor of the closet, Foggy sobbing over his exhausted body. 

After that he tiptoed around the dorm, careful not to alert Foggy to anything that might upset him. 

They left the dorm and the ghost of the rope coiled up in the top shelf of the closet. They split the rent on a walk-up for the duration of their internship at Landman and Zack. Matt tracked the progress of the abusive father three blocks away and fed the stimulus to the devil. 

The night he went out for the first time, Foggy was drunk. He’d been numbing the pain of a breakup for hours and had fallen asleep against the couch, slumped over and vulnerable in his exhaustion. 

Matt returned from the railways and took in this scene and changed in his bedroom. He returned to the living room and shook Foggy awake, who yawned and opened his mouth which smelled like cheap spirits and melatonin. Matt helped him up and down the hall to his bedroom. Foggy climbed into bed and grabbed a handful of Matt’s shirt and whined until Matt climbed in next to him. He fell asleep to the tune of a whistle emanating from Foggy’s stuffed nose.

Thus began months of physical contact and intimacy and touching for the sake of surviving through the worst of it. Matt would sneak out on nights that he could and every time he came back Foggy would be up, occupying himself with work or a book or, on really bad nights, a bottle. They would tumble into one bed or the other and hold each other, form a barrier against the rage and turbulence of the outside world.

Matt came home one night bleeding and dizzy and Foggy patched him up, allowing him to ride on the excuse of a bar fight. They both knew that it was a piss poor lie.

Foggy began going away on the nights that Matt stayed in. He’d see that Matt had settled himself into a seat with a surface to pull out work and he’d pick up his keys and his wallet and be off.

He came home tasting like drink and smelling like the floors of the dive bar across the way. 

Matt went out more and more if only to prevent Foggy from spending his time wasting away in that place. 

One Saturday near the end of their internship, Foggy invited Matt out to accompany him to the bar. It was called Josie’s and it felt as claustrophobic as the bed at the orphanage or the surfaces of the closet in the dorm. Matt drank until he could feel nothing except for Foggy’s warmth beside him, the sticky counter beneath his drumming fingers.

They bumped and ricocheted home, decided to sober up on the couch for an hour. Matt stood first, breaking the unspoken contract between the two of them. He held Foggy’s hand, traced the lines of his palm, told it all of his unprofessed sins--the darkest tar of his being. He brought everything into the light, confessed to God for another of countless times. 

The only thing he kept to himself was the mask. He let the devil loose on Foggy, the senses, his father, the church, even told him about Stick and Elektra and how he could no longer bear to have so much responsibility pressing down on all that guilt. 

Foggy asked him if he was faking his blindness. His heart told Matt that he did not believe the response. He did not go to bed with Matt that night. 

Foggy left at four in the morning; Matt knew because he was woken by the sound of the door slamming. 

Matt cried silently and cursed himself for his weakness and prayed to God. 

He went out looking for repentance as soon as the sun went down that night and did not return until dawn. Foggy was dead asleep at the kitchen table, whiskey drying on his breath, right hand rank with sweat and pen ink. Matt sat on the couch and felt the rays of the sun creep in through the windows.

Foggy slept through the morning and awoke mid-afternoon while Matt was halfway through a coffee and deep into a case file across from him. He did so in a jerking fashion, body suddenly upright as his brain struggled to catch up. His eyes found Matt and settled on his hands tracing the papers before him. He sighed out a cloud of liquor-tinged melancholy and rose to get himself a coffee of his own.

The rush crept up on both of them and soon they were away from Landman and Zack, signing their meager funds away to rent the offices of Nelson and Murdock, Attorneys at Law. They continued to share an apartment and Matt continued to go out. Foggy refused to acknowledge his absences. On the nights that both of them were free, they found themselves at Josie’s drinking away their demons and raising questions that went unanswered.

Karen Page fell unceremoniously into their lives and Matt went out more and Foggy watched the scars on his knuckles build up. One day Karen asked Matt about their origin and Foggy left the room before he could explain that he went to a boxing gym. 

Foggy let each of Matt’s bald-faced lies slide off of him, ignored the discoloration their relationship had accumulated, let Matt starve for sympathy.

The Russians and the bombings came and went and Foggy now stood in a pouring rain of deceit. Despite the unrelenting drive of the storm, he embraced the sting of the drops. Matt felt each one tear a new hole in his skin. They all mimicked the shape of the fresh scar on Foggy’s shoulder. 

Matt felt the presence of Fisk growing underneath his iron grip. He willingly fell into the baited trap. Nobu’s blade slashed into his skin again and again, reminiscent of Stick’s punishments during his training. He succumbed to Fisk, fought tooth and nail to escape with the help of the devil. He leaned into the punishment, letting his guilt build with every blow to his wrecked body. He showed up at his and Foggy’s apartment in a state similar to the one from the closet so many years ago, or the bathroom from twice as many.

Foggy cried again when he found him. His tears hit Matt’s searing body and the pool of blood around it and they shredded Matt’s heart more than any damage Nobu had done. 

When Matt rose to consciousness, he found Foggy’s heat in the kitchen and used it as an anchor, just as he had done on many lonely nights before. 

Foggy was angry and frustrated, but he knew what Matt had been doing since the first lie. He knew about the last unrevealed secret: Pandora’s box had been inverted and disproven. Matt traced the slashes littering his frame to bring himself back to reality.

He cried. He cried because he’d lied to his best friend and because it hurt and because maybe the night before had been yet another unsuccessful attempt to end his life. He cried because he knew he wouldn’t accept painkillers and because he’d failed to repent and because Foggy was so upset. 

Foggy cried along with him, let loose years of worry and disappointment to be aired out. Dirty laundry piled at Matt’s doorstep in heaps and droves. It threatened to bury both of them.

But Foggy stayed. He wavered on the fence of that decision for millennia, staring at Matt’s broken form as he struggled to sit up to stop him. He shifted his weight towards the door and away, decided to return after a minute of hesitation. 

Matt felt hands press against the popped stitches of the wound on his stomach. Foggy was kneeling directly in front of him, steadying him in a familiar way. Matt leaned into the touch, found his face with his hands and pulled him in and suddenly they were kissing. 

It felt like the innocence of that first night spent together, tasted like tears and sweat and blood from Matt’s split lip. Matt’s face was wet from tears, Foggy’s scratchy with stubble. They pulled away and breathed each other’s air for a moment before diving under again. 

Matt had to stop because his strength had left him. He leaned on Foggy for support as they retreated to one bedroom or the other, let himself be manhandled under soft covers. Allowed Foggy to patch up his pulled stitches. 

Foggy stayed. He climbed into bed beside Matt and held him, careful of the many tears in his skin. Matt fell asleep to Foggy’s hitching breaths, the wails of the city far from his numbing ears.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and criticisms are welcome. I swear I'll finish up between two lungs, but this was weighing on me and I needed to get through it before that could happen. 
> 
> I'm on tumblr! I'm not at all website savvy, but click here (god I hope that worked) to find me :)
> 
> *edit: It didn't fucking work >:( >:( >:( here's a url. https://hueyhuee.tumblr.com/


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